Game Details

Let's be honest: naming a game Thief brings some expectations along with it. This Eidos Montreal-developed reboot of the classic franchise doesn't share the development pedigree of either of the first two Thief titles (Looking Glass Studios) or Thief: Deadly Shadows (Ion Storm), but by taking the name, it's placing itself in the same lineage as those well-remembered progenitors of the stealth genre.

The new Thief is separated by almost ten years from the last game in the series. Game design has come a long way in that time, and stealth gameplay specifically has come to be a commonplace addition to many other genres since the first Thief helped originate the concept in 1998. Rather than comparing this reboot to the outdated memories (and the very different gaming landscape) of those original titles, then, it's better to ask whether Thief can stand on its own as a modern game, regardless of the baggage of its franchise.

In short, the answer is no. It really can't.

Let's start with the story, or what bits of it are comprehensible, at least. In the prologue, we've barely been introduced to Garrett's new thieving partner, the appropriately spunky and troubled Erin, when we see her falling through a skylight and into an incredibly convenient energy-summoning ritual being performed by a group of mysterious hooded figures. (Is there any other kind of hooded figure?) Garrett is knocked out and awakens a year later to a city transformed by The Gloom, a combination of the bubonic plague and some sort of horrible mental disease that is ravaging the vaguely Victorian, vaguely steampunk citizens of the town.

From there, the game tries its best to weave together an incredible number of disparate plot threads: the mystery of Garrett's disappearance (and convenient year-long amnesia); the whereabouts of Erin; rising civil unrest against an overbearing Baron driven by The Gloom; an ongoing feud with Garrett's "Thief-taker General" nemesis; the appearance of red-eyed, shambling, zombie-like creatures; the meaning of a frequently recurring, white-tinted dreamscape (spoiler alert: it's an allegory for not much at all, really); and a mysterious ethereal force called Primal that's shoehorned in for good measure ("mystical nonsense" is a phrase that kept appearing in my notes as I played the game).

This would be a lot to hold together for a well-written game, but it becomes downright impossible for Thief, which is practically drowning in characters that loudly tell players what is happening rather than showing anything resembling real character development. The Thief-taker General is a particularly scenery-chewing antagonist, but friendly fence Basso and spiritual/political leader Orion also do their best to play as flat stereotypes whose every move can be predicted about five minutes in.

After following the tattered threads of this story through some predictable twists in a brothel, an abandoned asylum, a cavernous underground city, and a ridiculously vast wooden ship, I was hoping for a conclusion that at least brought some closure, if not some meaning, to the preceding cavalcade of events. I don't mind telling you, though, that I could not make the slightest sense out of the game's concluding cut scene. I don't mean that in the "Oh, that's interesting and could be interpreted in a number of ways" sense. I mean it in the "I have no idea what is happening right now, unless maybe time travel and possibly teleportation are involved somehow" sense.

Even this confusing mess of a plot might be somewhat forgivable if Thief were able to build an interesting, engaging world for its characters to traipse about in. Unfortunately, the city that serves as the game's hub is pretty lifeless, with ridiculously broad incidental characters that seem to come out of nowhere amid the general emptiness. These token citizens gesticulate wildly with vaguely human motions as they loudly pronounce their actions, giving generally horrid vocal performances and engaging in heavy-handed scripted moments. The seemingly random pans and camera angles that accompany some of the scripted cut scenes don't help matters, especially when keeping things in Garrett's first-person perspective would have been both less distracting and simpler.

Even when not acting out a script, some citizens seem to have been plopped down in the city completely randomly. At a few points, I stumbled upon the same Victorian-dressed couple, apparently happy to be just standing together in the middle of the night, near the end of an alley, staring vaguely into the middle distance and swaying in an idle animation. This handling of non-player characters would have been embarrassing in an early PlayStation 2 game; these days it's downright unforgivable.

Speaking of unforgivable bits, I'd be remiss not to say a few words about the horrendous sound balancing in the game. Sometimes a character's words would be drowned out by the background music despite him standing just a few feet away. Other times a conversation I had overheard through a hole in the wall would continue at full volume even as I stepped away and walked down the hall. Often, unmistakable on-screen actions like floors collapsing or fires raging would go by with nary a sound effect. Less often (but still too often) two incidental conversations would overlap with each other, both at full volume, even as I stepped away from one and right next to the other. I could forgive a couple of these snafus, but the audio issues in Thief were frequent enough to take me right out of the moment with surprising regularity.

On the visual side, the PlayStation 4 version I tested was surprisingly stuttery, with noticeable slowdown and frame rate drops during many sections. Load times were long enough to be annoying as well; every death or new section of town meant a wait of 10 to 15 seconds.

Disjointed gameplay

If most everything about the plot is consistently hard to stomach consistently, the basics of Thief's gameplay are at least not actively painful. True to its stealth heritage, much of Thief's gameplay involves sticking to the shadows and avoiding the notice of frequent guards that stand between you and your target (while maybe picking up a few treasures laying about along the way). Garrett has obviously been taking lessons from the likes of Assassin's Creed and Uncharted because he can now run along at a good clip, clamber up ledges and convenient crates, and use a claw to hoist himself higher (though he can only attach to hatched wall panels that literally glow blue, in case you had any chance of missing them). Garrett also has a new sort of stealthy duck-and-swoop gliding move that lets him dart quickly between bits of shadow.

The interface does a pretty good job of giving you visual cues as to when you're well hidden and when you're fully visible in the light, and it's decently forgiving in giving you a chance to quickly duck back out of the way when a guard catches you out of the corner of his eye. The game also gives you a number of methods for distracting guards; you can snuff out the candles and torches that reveal your position to them or take them out stealthily with a well-placed arrow or silent rear takedown.

Still, I found it much too tough to get through most areas without being seen. Part of this is due to the game's generally linear level design that favors narrow hallways or alleyways and often leaves just one or perhaps two feasible paths to your goal (though there are plenty of dead-end treasure rooms along the sides). Guards never seem to be in short supply, and dragging them away from their companions and the strategic choke points that they cling to isn't a walk in the park, even with a pretty handy map and on-screen indicator for where you should or could be going. If you do manage to lure them away from their post, it doesn't take much at all to alert their seemingly heightened sense to your presence, either.

Once you're spotted by these guards... well, one of three things will happen. If you're spotted by a lone guard with no backup, you'll probably be able to take him out by activating your time-limited "focus" powers and conking him a couple of times with your blackjack. If you're totally overwhelmed and cornered by enemies with no easy way out, you'll probably just be killed before you can even draw back one of a wide variety of useful arrows.

More often than you should, though, you'll simply be able to use your incredible sprinting speed to run away from your attackers and go back into hiding. Guards seem to forget about you almost immediately when you slide out of their view, to the point where you can often turn a corner, leap behind a box, and watch as the guard stands there looking confused as to where you possibly could have gone.

Many times, after being spotted, I was able to simply dash toward the next objective on my heads-up display and make it there before the guards could converge, ending their pursuit with a convenient loading screen. Once, I was able to pickpocket my target even after he had spotted me and then run away down the hall and into the safety of a closet before his guards could lay a hand on me. In one particularly silly situation, I ran away from a guard and made a circuit through two doors at the opposite end of a room until I was able to loop back around to the rear of my assailant and surprise him. The sheer exploitability of this braindead AI doesn't only kill the stealth gameplay, but also the entire mood of the game (to its credit, the game does offer a mode where being spotted leads to instant death, which might actually be preferable).

Enlarge/ Oh great, less sneaking and more running through fire. Just what I wanted.

For a game that's supposedly about stealth, there are also way too many sections in Thief where Garrett is all alone and forced to engage with some extremely unengaging puzzles and platforming bits. Oh look, here's a section where you have to turn cranks to rearrange some moving staircases and create a path up a tower. Here's a locked door that requires you to backtrack a few dozen rooms to find its key. Here's yet another cavernous room where you have to find the well-hidden exit point to move on to the next room—or else wander around lost for a half-hour or so (this happened to me twice).

There's the random "action" scene where you have to run away as a burning bridge collapses around you—because that's the kind of thing Call of Duty players like, right? There are the downright pointless sections where you have to sidle along some exposed pipes from a third-person perspective because hey, if Nathan Drake can do it, dangit, Garrett can too! There's the extremely claustrophobic "open world" inter-chapter hub where you can break into random people's houses and pick up their valuables, Legend of Zelda style.

There are way too many sections in the game where it feels like a producer was just trying to check off some hot gameplay element from some other title or genre on some checklist. Not only are none of these sections particularly well done, but they all take away from any sense of tension or flow you might have been feeling from the decently executed stealth sections.

It all contributes to an overall feeling of a disjointed game that doesn't really know what it's doing or what it wants to be. Which is a shame, because there are bits and pieces at the core of Thief that could have been salvaged together into a decent overall game. As it stands, the new Thief is a confusing, confused mess that doesn't live up to its namesake.

The good

Garrett's new duck-and-swoop move is pretty slick

Decent interface for stealth maneuvers

The bad

The plot is an incoherent mess

Seriously, the ending didn't make a lick of sense

Hackneyed writing and wooden performances

Level design is much too linear

Guards are too sensitive to your every movement

Guard AI is easy to outrun and easier to fool

Lots of badly done, out-of-place platforming and puzzle bits

The ugly

Why does every game have to have some mystical ghost nonsense these days?

Verdict: Go buy Dishonored instead. If you already own Dishonored, just play it again.

You can play Dishonored without Blink, and the fact that it's there isn't bad, if your definition of "win" is to finish the game without using it.

Dishonored was a very rare thing for me - a game that I played through to completion 3 different times. I played through it "normally", then I played through it determined to get the achievement for no combat at all (which was fairly hard) and then I played through it deliberately killing every living thing in the game .

It's very rare for a game to be able to hold my attention for one entire play through, let alone 3.

Some of these complaints actually sound like stuff right out of the original games. The AI problems, at least. Very disappointing, though, and I honestly wasn't expecting much. I logged countless hours in the two original games (100+ each, easy) back in the early 2000's. I was completely obsessed with them. Once you got into some of the really well done fan missions, you could play those games endlessly.

I played T:DS, but didn't really enjoy it that much. It was okay, but ran like crap even for a decent PC at the time, and didn't really feel the same as the old games. I was also irrationally angry at them for getting rid of the rope arrows. However, the whole game was worth it for the "Cradle" mission alone. THAT felt like Thief.

I also loved playing that Thievery mod for UT with my friends, and I have downloaded and been meaning to try out The Dark Mod. Maybe I'll check out Dishonored as well.

Hey, at least they brought back rope arrows in the new game... right?

Quote:

and use a claw to hoist himself higher (though he can only attach to hatched wall panels that literally glow blue, in case you had any chance of missing them)

I can see your point, and I do like self imposed challenges. Still, purposely taking the most elaborate and not the most smart way out seems kinda silly and part of "winning" is feeling smart by the end of it.

I think it's how you view it. To me, having to surreptitiously create a pile of stuff to get over an obstacle while avoiding patrols or figuring out a complex way of getting around guard schedules does, in fact, make me feel smarter.

I'm not trying to dismiss the idea that blink can be a big "push this to solve puzzle" button. What I'm saying is that you can challenge yourself to not use it, so the presence of that alone doesn't bother me (it would, obviously, for a multiplayer game).

What I'm also saying is that good game design for games like this, where challenge is a factor, should be cognizant of this and take advantage of it. Giving achievements for skillful play (not getting caught, et cetera) is one way. But I do think the system for this game is probably a great model. Make difficulty mean more than adding more HP or more bodies. Higher levels of difficulty should introduce penalties to the most powerful abilities. Blink, for example, could make a reasonably loud sound, meaning that using it in the open world is feasible to get to secret areas, but using it to "win" the game is unlikely, since it'll actually make it easier for you to be found. You should be able to take off the mask the game supplies you with, leaving you with less situational awareness, but make you less recognizable to guards (some enemies, of course, should know who you are and have to be avoided.

TL;DR: Gaming can be what you make of it, and there's always ways to "win" that the people who design it don't predict. Beating a game with nothing but a pistol. Never so much as catching anyone's attention, et cetera. So we have the ability to make our games more challenging, even when they don't plan on it. But yes, I'll agree that more game developers SHOULD plan on it.

Morrowind, no armor, no weapons, no magic, no stealing, no reloads - just fists, feet, and potions. It's the most tedious thing you can imagine for a lot of levels, but by the time you finish you know you've done something.If you think the goal is winning then this is an utterly moronic way to play. If you think there's more to playing than just winning then you'll understand why you would do it..

Thief 3 was an embarrassing shoehorn—a feature-stripped game that defined "console-itis," with its awkwardly bad zoning and terrible tiny level segments. It was a bad Thief game, especially after the stone-cold perfection that was Thief 2.

I guess I'll continue to play the first two games and hope, one day, for a non-shit sequel. But that day is apparently not today.

edited - and Dishonored was a piss-poor stand-in for a Thief game. It was modern, but it sure wasn't Thief.

Here's to hoping we never get a Thief game that's horrendous enough to be compared to the AVP movie.

I'm very sad to hear about Thief 3 being a general disappointment. I bought it once because it kept coming up in GESC threads related to scariest moments in video games. Something a bout a cradle. I bought it, and it didn't take too long for me to lose interest in it. I was hoping that maybe I was just burned out on gaming at the time, and if I returned to it, I might find it more enjoyable.

Also, with the desire for a "true to the soul of the original" sequel or reboot, has the Thief franchise achieved X-Com status?

Thief 3 was an embarrassing shoehorn—a feature-stripped game that defined "console-itis," with its awkwardly bad zoning and terrible tiny level segments. It was a bad Thief game, especially after the stone-cold perfection that was Thief 2.

I guess I'll continue to play the first two games and hope, one day, for a non-shit sequel. But that day is apparently not today.

edited - and Dishonored was a piss-poor stand-in for a Thief game. It was modern, but it sure wasn't Thief.

Here's to hoping we never get a Thief game that's horrendous enough to be compared to the AVP movie.

I'm very sad to hear about Thief 3 being a general disappointment. I bought it once because it kept coming up in GESC threads related to scariest moments in video games. Something a bout a cradle. I bought it, and it didn't take too long for me to lose interest in it. I was hoping that maybe I was just burned out on gaming at the time, and if I returned to it, I might find it more enjoyable.

Also, with the desire for a "true to the soul of the original" sequel or reboot, has the Thief franchise achieved X-Com status?

I'd recommend giving Thief 3 a shot again if you never got to the point where you figured out the Cradle reference. While it wasn't on par with the first two games it was IMO still fun and worth playing. Just jack up the difficulty and ghost as much as possible to make it a little better

This is what I'd like in terms of plot: Here's what you want to steal. Go get it, and get out.

Trying to build a complex story around it is "AAA" wank.

Often what I want from games is "immersion", however sad that might be. Games that reach beyond the capacity of their writers are shooting themselves in the foot. Good game writing is very difficult (apparently). A half-assed story will kill atmosphere very quickly.

The most immersive game I have played in a long time is State of Decay. Almost no story, but good mechanics and very harsh. Atmosphere need not rely on story.

This is what I'd like in terms of plot: Here's what you want to steal. Go get it, and get out.

Trying to build a complex story around it is "AAA" wank.

I myself thoroughly enjoy a well-written plot in games such as these.

Also, for myself, games like these with bad plots completely disappoint me.

I have been gaming a long time, and as far as gameplay I have seen it all, many times over now, in many slight variations of. The thing that hooks a weathered gamer like me these days is actually plot and plot alone. At least in a single player affair.

DEHR was a good game. I mean unless you are absolutely SO jaded that anything not on part with the originals is "shit".

The problem with HR is that it's called Deus Ex. I mean, it's Deus Ex. HR was not a bad game at all, but compared to Deus Ex... It wasn't all that good. And this is still true, Deus Ex is still excellent in many ways.

This is what I'd like in terms of plot: Here's what you want to steal. Go get it, and get out.

Trying to build a complex story around it is "AAA" wank.

Writing is in one of those areas of "You don't know you want it, until you see it at its best." I would have made the easily-put, sweeping statement of "Story doesn't belong in a rhythm game. Period." until I was brought to tears by "You're the Inspiration" in Elite Beat Agents.

Storylines can certainly make a game -worse- when they're done badly. I don't think that should be a motivation for games to just abandon them though. At the very least, a developer should know what their strengths are, and put emphasis on them.

DEHR was a good game. I mean unless you are absolutely SO jaded that anything not on part with the originals is "shit".

The problem with HR is that it's called Deus Ex. I mean, it's Deus Ex. HR was not a bad game at all, but compared to Deus Ex... It wasn't all that good. And this is still true, Deus Ex is still excellent in many ways.

You definitively have some nostalgia glasses when it comes to the original Deus Ex games.They are indeed amazing but a lot of the game's mechanics have not aged well. Its story and map design are still top notch though.

DEHR was a good game. I mean unless you are absolutely SO jaded that anything not on par with the originals is "shit".

I don't know if it's good or not, but I found it boring. I had more fun playing Invisible War.

The plot was predictable if you are a Gibson fan. That was probably the worst thing. Then the ending was just ridiculous.

The mechanics were OK, but there was nothing inspiring there. I ended up with so many unspent skill points, just because I was trying to keep the difficulty up. I hardly wanted any of the abilities on offer.

I got almost zero sense of immersion or engagement. Your mileage may vary, of course, everyone has different tastes. To my mind it was mediocre.

>>>Verdict: Go buy Dishonored instead. If you already own Dishonored, just play it again.

Yikes. I'd always meant to try one of the theif games, but I think I'll stay away now

No, don't do that.By all means go find a copy of the original or even the second one. Theif is one of the most satisfying games I ever played. And be sure to use headphones, because it had a grounbreaking ability to project 3d sound perception with two speakers which was crucial to the gameplay.

Was the 3D audio really part of the game, or was that just the availability of Aureal hardware at the time?

3D audio was the game. If you roleplayed the game at all then you lived or died by listening. You could tell exactly where everybody was and what they were doing. Maybe even more important was listening to yourself.As others have said 3D is no big deal now, but I still can't think of any game I've played that's come close to using it the way Thief did. Sometimes I would just sit and listen to the guards wandering around griping about their jobs.

I remember the audio being good, but having owned a Vortex 1 & 2, I remember all 3D audio being good back then. My 3dfx/Aureal system is packed away right now, so I can't dust it off and check.

I tried playing Dishonored as a stealth game, but even on easy mode, the guards have no problem spotting you from 50 yards away when you're standing in pitch blackness. I'm disappointed that the Thief reboot can't stand up to Thief III, since that's my favorite game in the series, and even more disappointed that I didn't see this article before I pre-ordered it on Saturday. However, I guess one thing that's missing from the "Pros" column... at least they didn't "Assassins Creed" it up and turn it into a game where you run around killing everyone.

Just be thankful you didn't learn that lesson the painful way like some of us did by ordering the Founder's Package for Mechwarrior Online...

What has two thumbs and plunked down for a preordered *Collector's* Edition Warhammer: Online?

...this guy.

Warhammer Online was an awesome game destroyed by EA's hamfisted attempts at trying to "kill WoW". If they'd released it 4 months after Wrath of the Lich King, rather than 2 months before it, and used the 6 month difference to extend beta, fix bugs, and add what had become post-release content, it would've been a much better game, and the player base would've stuck around for it. Instead, EA was convinced they had to shove it out the door ahead of a major WoW expansion, which just caused them to lose half their playerbase when they jumped ship to go back to WoW. Of course, downsizing the QA department to save money didn't help either.

Hmm. The unfortunate thing is that I don't really have a go-to reviewer anymore that I trust unconditionally on game reviews, although as a site, IGN seems to gel with my thinking more often than not (and they were not particularly kind).

I'm enough of a Thief groupie that I will need to play it for myself, if for no other reason than to be able to bash it knowledgeably.

Still, Kyle's review... Stilted acting and bad AI? That could be any Thief, depending on what you focus on. They all had horrible AI moments. They all had bad acting too...albeit none of it ever being committed by the voice actors for Garrett or Constantine.

It's amazing how, of all things, the cinematics went WAY DOWN in terms of how professional they looked despite being six years newer, but DS had a good story. Maybe not as good as T1, but more gripping than T2's.

Also amazing: when Thief:DS came out, it already had seemed like an eternity had passed since Thief 2. That was six years. Now it's been ten years since DS. Wow.

I can see your point, and I do like self imposed challenges. Still, purposely taking the most elaborate and not the most smart way out seems kinda silly and part of "winning" is feeling smart by the end of it.

I think it's how you view it. To me, having to surreptitiously create a pile of stuff to get over an obstacle while avoiding patrols or figuring out a complex way of getting around guard schedules does, in fact, make me feel smarter.

I'm not trying to dismiss the idea that blink can be a big "push this to solve puzzle" button. What I'm saying is that you can challenge yourself to not use it, so the presence of that alone doesn't bother me (it would, obviously, for a multiplayer game).

What I'm also saying is that good game design for games like this, where challenge is a factor, should be cognizant of this and take advantage of it. Giving achievements for skillful play (not getting caught, et cetera) is one way. But I do think the system for this game is probably a great model. Make difficulty mean more than adding more HP or more bodies. Higher levels of difficulty should introduce penalties to the most powerful abilities. Blink, for example, could make a reasonably loud sound, meaning that using it in the open world is feasible to get to secret areas, but using it to "win" the game is unlikely, since it'll actually make it easier for you to be found. You should be able to take off the mask the game supplies you with, leaving you with less situational awareness, but make you less recognizable to guards (some enemies, of course, should know who you are and have to be avoided.

TL;DR: Gaming can be what you make of it, and there's always ways to "win" that the people who design it don't predict. Beating a game with nothing but a pistol. Never so much as catching anyone's attention, et cetera. So we have the ability to make our games more challenging, even when they don't plan on it. But yes, I'll agree that more game developers SHOULD plan on it.

Morrowind, no armor, no weapons, no magic, no stealing, no reloads - just fists, feet, and potions. It's the most tedious thing you can imagine for a lot of levels, but by the time you finish you know you've done something.If you think the goal is winning then this is an utterly moronic way to play. If you think there's more to playing than just winning then you'll understand why you would do it..

You'd do it because... you're... a masochist? Don't get me wrong... I played Skyrim for about a year before I actually decided to finish the main story... but I generally came up with more inspired goals than "naked potion punching" my way through the game. But if that's what you like, more power to you. If you find a way to play a game that entertains you, at least I won't call it a "moronic" way to play.

Just be thankful you didn't learn that lesson the painful way like some of us did by ordering the Founder's Package for Mechwarrior Online...

What has two thumbs and plunked down for a preordered *Collector's* Edition Warhammer: Online?

...this guy.

Warhammer Online was an awesome game destroyed by EA's hamfisted attempts at trying to "kill WoW". If they'd released it 4 months after Wrath of the Lich King, rather than 2 months before it, and used the 6 month difference to extend beta, fix bugs, and add what had become post-release content, it would've been a much better game, and the player base would've stuck around for it. Instead, EA was convinced they had to shove it out the door ahead of a major WoW expansion, which just caused them to lose half their playerbase when they jumped ship to go back to WoW. Of course, downsizing the QA department to save money didn't help either.

I love Star Wars: The Old Republic (and, didn't pre-order it which seems good in hindsight), but the tales sound similar. Right after launch, due to a generally unoptimized client, SWTOR ran horribly on a top-grade machine.

Also they found out the hard way that story and MMORPG don't necessarily go well together, especially when you consider certain BioWare storytelling tendencies (e.g. Evil makes you ugly, the fact that each quest subplot is theoretically self-contained, when it really shouldn't be, etc.) I liked some of the plots, and felt the game was superior in general to WoW...but here I am a year after my retirement from the game. Sure I have a subscription, but I rarely play. I wonder how long it is before I wind up pulling the plug on a game I love...just, don't care about anymore?

I had my reservations after watching the trailers. It's a relief to read a good honest review like this, with limited titles available (on next-gen consoles) it's tempting to grab whatever comes out, but I'll definitely avoid this now.

To all those that have played Thief 1 & 2, but nothing else and are looking for a Thief-2 feel sequel with the same engine, have you tried the fan-made Thief 2X? Highly impressive given the amateur development and voicing (main char was voiced by April Lurty who was just a regular over on the TTLG forums and did a pretty good job).

Edit : Dishonored was actually pretty good. I started it with the false expectation of it being a cheap & tacky rip-off of Thief, but was pleasantly surprised to have been proven wrong. Maybe that's the problem with Thief 4 - instead of not being "Thief like enough", it's actually trying too hard to close the gaping chasm between Looking Glass Studio's Thief whilst clinging to today's "Cinematic Quick Time Event laden pseudo-railroad" stuff, and like Dishonored, should have just been a game in its own right without trying to tag onto the brand...

Damn, that sucks. I was really looking forward to this game too. The very first Thief game taught me what a video card was... Thief 1 and especially 2 are some of my most favorite games...

What is up lately with developers shitting out garbage sequels? How is this a sustainable business practice?

Maybe I'm getting too cynical in my old age, but I think it is only supposed to be a 'hit and run' type of thing. For whatever reason gamers are an excitable bunch. These developers know that they can brush the dust off some old title, put out a decent trailer and the hype train just takes off flying. They sold a ton of preorders and if they put out a somewhat okay game people will pick it up with a passing interest. Granted you can only do it once per title, but if you spread them out enough gamers keep coming back for these reboots. Hell, there are even gamers in this comment section that are excusing bad AI and sound issues as a staple of the series because the old games had those issues too...

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.